Blur
Blur's fourth album The Great Escape paid homage to
the English tradition of music-hall pop, as exemplified by The
Kinks, Ian Dury and Madness, who all combined wry, observational
lyrics about everyday life with a tragicomic pathos.
Singer and wordsmith Damon Albarn went to drama school, and
appropriately most Blur songs are like miniature satirical
plays. The Great Escape is full of third-person
vignettes that caricature English stereotypes, such as Ernold
Same - a brief sketch about a conformist commuter
crushed by soul-numbing routine.
Country House - the single that beat Oasis to the UK
Number One spot - is about a city gent who retreats from the urban
rat race. Mocking a namedropping poseur, Charmless Man
echoes the heavy-handed satire of The Kinks' Dedicated
Follower of Fashion, while Top Man is an punning
portrait of a womanising thug who's "naughty by
nature/shooting guns on the High Street of Love".
Despite flashes of wit, there was a condescending detachment
and lack of compassion to Albarn's writing that makes his
characters hollow and two-dimensional. The singer's bogus Cockney
accent, where "cold sweat" is pronounced "cow swah",
and his perpetual sneering tone, also become irritating with
prolonged exposure.
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